> A simple request like
> select formulas for a given date with drug trial parameters in some
> given ranges can be expressed as a single SQL statement with an EAV
> table and would require 8 unions, or thereabout, with multiple tables.

Maybe, maybe not. Would it have been so hard to create a tool to do it? I
assume a tool was created to make sure the EAV tables were well-behaved,
that no one entered spurious rows, nor left rows out. But perhaps not?

Hmm. That's pretty close to my intended meaning, yes. (This is a theory
group.) But I do of course concede that bugs and misfeatures might cripple
a specific version of a specific product so badly that a really bad approach
at least works even when the "proper" approach fails entirely. But that is
a banal observation.